Israeli hacker posts Saudi credit card info

Trent Nouveau, 11th January 2012

An Israeli hacker has posted hundreds of Saudi credit card numbers in retaliation for a recent digital infiltration that compromised thousands of Israeli credit cards.

The hacker - known as "0xOmer" - told the Israeli daily Ha'aretz he had also extracted (but not uploaded) the personal information of over 50,000 individuals residing in various Gulf states as well as Iran.

"[This hack sends a] signal to Arab regimes that they must act against the criminals that are orchestrating these attacks from their territory," said 0xOmer.

"If they won't, and the attacks will continue, I'll hack into the king's accounts and maybe Saudi and Arab government websites... [This is] just a warning... If the state won't deter against criminals and terrorists in cyberspace, we the citizens will."

0xOmer also told Ha'aretz he had refrained from posting CVV numbers to prevent cyber criminals from making actual purchases.

Although little is know about 0xOmer, the hacker claims he is a 17-year-old Israeli who immigrated to the country from his native Ukraine at the age of 4. He chose to adopt the handle OxOmer in response to the Saudi hack and extract op, which was executed by an enigmatic individual named "0xOmar."

As TG Daily previously reported, the Israeli cabinet recently approved the creation of a National Cyber Directorate to bolster the digital perimeter protecting the borders of the Jewish state.

The nascent Directorate will likely be led (at least initially) by elements within the IDF's secretive Unit 8200 - which may have coded the Stuxnet computer worm responsible for infecting Iranian nuclear facilities.

"Terrorist groups understand there is a huge potential for causing harm to countries or entities, damage that could change the [strategic] balance," an IDF officer explained.

"Our job is to prevent this from happening. In contrast to other battle fronts, time and space have no meaning in the cyber realm."